The Choir of Bells - Sunday, Nov. 18, 2007

As you know, I direct bells at 2 Bay Area churches, one of which is Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church in Sunnyvale, CA. Our handbell choir is called "The Choir of Bells" and we played in church this past Sunday morning, for the 10:00am Traditional service.

We played 2 pieces for the Prelude:

Our God, Our Help in Ages Past arranged by Lee J. Afdahl. I made 2 changes to the piece:

1) from the pickup to m. 49, through m. 56 (the chime section), I doubled the melody up *two* octaves on bells. It's a trick I learned from Sonos' director James Meredith - he uses it to great effect in his arrangement of the Spanish piece "Cordoba" - it adds an almost ethereal, crystalline quality to the music. I had to borrow a D8 from a neighboring church (Thanks Dave & Dian!!) but it was totally worth it.

2) I cut m. 57 through beat 3 of 75 (the mallet section). That section never did much for me. :-(

Immediately after that, the organist played a short piece (Festive Processional on 'Now Thank We All Our God' by Michael Burkhardt), then we played Procession and Hymn by Andrea Handley, which yes is the same piece my other bell choir played last week. Again, I had it put into the bulletin as Praise to the Lord, the Almighty!

For the Offertory, we played Philip L. Roberts' arrangement of Holy, Holy, Holy from pages 59 & 60 of Volume 2 of his book Hymns for Handbells along with the piano. We played the first verse (page 59) entirely on chimes. For the second verse (page 60), we switched to bells AND 3 sopranos from the Chancel Choir (vocal) sang the descant out of the hymnal. I had them stay in their seats, so the singing seemed to come from nowhere & everywhere at the same time, like the proverbial "Choir of Angels". Simply lovely! Judging from the many comments I received after the service, the congregation really enjoyed it, too. :-)

Finally, we joined the Chancel Choir on their anthem Jubilate Deo (Psalm 100) by Dale Wood. The score calls for organ, handbells, finger cymbals, triangle, tambourine, and suspended cymbal. Members of the Choir of Bells played all the percussion instruments. It was the first time we'd ever done anything with the Chancel Choir & so it took a bit more time to put together than we would have liked -- the singers were not accustomed to the time delay between the 2 groups (especially since the Choir of Bells plays from the Sanctuary floor while the Chancel Choir is up in the Chancel), but we managed. We also got lots of compliments from members of the congregation for this one - with the comment that the bells could be louder!

We are considering doing more things together, which I love to do - I love to include other instruments with bells. I think it makes my ringers much more flexible (and they have to be pretty flexible with me as their director! LOL!) to have to account for an outside instrument or vocalist, being aware of how they phrase and really *listening* for how the various musical lines relate to each other.